"The Nature of Blood" is an unforgettable novel about loss and persecution, about courage and betrayal, and about the terrible pain yet absolute necessity of human memory. This, Caryl Phillips' sixth novel, is his boldest work to date. In a masterful melding of resonant histories and experiences, he explores the most dangereous, nightmarish aspects of our identity. We find Phillips' characters - principally a young Jewish woman growing up in Germany in the middle part of this century, and an African general hired by the Doge to command his armies in sixteenth-century Venice - at times of personal crisis and momentous social conflict. What emerges through these inextricably linked stories is Europe's age-old obsession with race, with sameness and difference, with blood. Who are you? You are not us. Therefore we define ourselves, in part, by defining you. Or, sometimes, by destroying you.